2018 Digital Marketing Trends to Win New Customers

Is your digital marketing strategy stuck in a time warp? Top industry experts review 2018 digital marketing trends and realistic ways to integrate the latest technologies into your business.

Technologies, such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and voice search interactions, no longer just belong to sci-fi films. So how can we best use these new technologies in the real world to engage consumers? That’s what the Forbes Communications Council (FCC) aims to answer. The FCC is a think tank made up of invitation-only members who eat, sleep, and breathe marketing. They’ve highlighted a series of 2018 digital marketing trends and offer tips on taming the mar-tech beast to realistically integrate the latest technologies into your marketing plan.

Virtual Reality

A marketing tool increasingly on the rise for large and small brands, VR is still relatively new. The challenge is using VR in a way that makes sense for your brand. While others are still trying to figure it out, now is your time to explore your brand’s options with VR.

Below is an example of how Hawthorne Cat used 360 video to illustrate their operating training.

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Interactive Content

Interactive web experiences that display thought leadership in compelling, animated, and visual ways are expected to lead the pack in 2018. While blog or PDF content (think white papers and guides) were common lead generators marketers relied on in the past, engaging, interactive web content is a trend that is here to stay.

User-Generated Content

A recent Stackla study found that 86 percent of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands to support. Sixty percent say user-generated content (UGC) is the most authentic form of content. Find ways to incorporate trusted and engaging UGC into your multichannel marketing efforts and, in the process, earn loyalty from your customers’ hearts… and their wallets too.

Voice Search

Almost everyone with access to a phone has heard of Siri, and those who use Amazon have probably heard of her brainchild, Alexa. Voice search has become one of the most adopted technologies in modern history and it’s time for marketers to hop on the bandwagon. The allure of voice search options is that it provides consumers with one clean answer. Make sure the voice search giants (Google, Apple, Microsoft) have the right facts about your business so Siri and Alexa can lead inquiring voices to your door.

Pinterest

Though a sometimes overlooked platform due to its niche nature, Pinterest is beginning to look like the next big thing. The new Pinterest Lens gives you the ability to snapshot your products, place them in front of consumers and gain a new avenue for marketing attention in 2018.

Account-Based Content Marketing

One size doesn’t always fit all when it comes to content marketing. Account-based content marketing targets unique personas within a company and customizes the customer journey with corresponding micro-sites, landing pages, images, and calls-to-action.

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